


Backlash

by Starlightify



Series: repairing the world [9]
Category: DCU
Genre: Character Study, Child Abuse, Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 06:22:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8001760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlightify/pseuds/Starlightify
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex Luthor is going to save the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backlash

**Author's Note:**

> This work has warnings for parental abuse, parent death, and a house burning down. Good ol' Lex Luthor stuff.
> 
> This fic mostly came from us wondering, with friends, "why the hell is Lex the way he is?" And also a big dose of absolutely hating the way that Lex's abuse is portrayed in canon. "Lex hates Superman because he was abused as a kid" is not only absolutely heinously bad storytelling, it also plays in to a bunch of garbage about abused kids being lost causes, damaged goods, etc. Which is. Not something we're into, for a lot of reasons. So! An attempt to make Lex's Lexness make sense. Again, parts of this, especially the beginning scene, are pretty heavily based on "Superman: Birthright."
> 
> Also, Lex's shit dad is patterned almost exactly after our shit dad. Thanks for the everything, dad. At least now we have a great model for abuser characters.

Lex Luthor did not kill his father.

The fire that destroyed the house destroyed months of work, of research, of labor and pain and love. His father was not worth a single gram, a single byte of the things Lex had in his lab. The death of his father wasn’t even a cheap consolation prize, because Lex knew, knew the moment his father breathed his last amongst the flames and rubble, that all the people who had never noticed the bruises, the limps, the flinches and the triggers and all the screaming signals, would suddenly recall every single instance they had ignored when they could have helped him. And they will use those instances to tear Lex down.

Lex holds grudges, everyone knows that. He holds grudges like they’re the only thing he has in the world. And now there will be people whispering, ‘I hear Luthor senior was harsh on Lex. Maybe Lex snapped. Maybe he set the fire on purpose.’

As if, should Lex ever try to kill someone, he would do it in a way that could be traced back to _him_.

So when the firemen come, Lex rages. Turns the story into not a tale of a savage, beaten dog of a boy who finally bites back, but of small-town resentments, infighting and intersuspicions.

“You could have saved him!” Lex screams, throat raw from the heat and the smoke. “You could have saved all of it! But you wanted to watch us _burn_!”

He watches the flickers cross the faces of the firemen. Each of them so sure that they did their best. Each of them unsure of their companions. Of the people who called in about the fire. Wondering if one of their fellows is the reason that a man died tonight.

Typical.

People are so maddeningly predictable.

The meteorite is hot in his palms. He was so close, tonight, to making something new of it, making history – the future of clean energy is quite literally in his hands. And he’s blown it. He pushed too fast, too hard, ignored the safety protocols (because what good ever came of following rules, of listening to the cautions of plodding, slow people) and destroyed everything, because –

Because he was angry and hurt. Which is hardly new. But the source is, because of all people, he never thought _Clark Kent_ would turn out to disappoint him the same way everyone else has.

He will consider this a lesson learned, ground in with ash and burns and blood.

People will always disappoint him.

~x~

Lex Luthor is a prodigy.

Lex Luthor graduated college at age fourteen.

Lex Luthor is going to change the world.

In all these expectations, these futures mapped out for him, there is no room for Lex himself. There has only ever been what little he can do to move with these suppositions. And he’s damn good at it. He manages to uproot his father, haul him away from his offices and networks, yank him all over the United States, because Lex Luthor is going to singlehandedly pioneer the field of astrobiology. Though his father’s hands get twitchy, though his rages come more frequently now that he is out of his comfort zone, Lex still takes a bitter, sharp pleasure in knowing that he forced his father into this position. That Luthor senior could either let his fourteen-year-old son go tearing off through the country on a three-year quest to recover meteorite fragments _on his own_ and face all the scrutiny that decision would cause, or play the doting father and go with him.

Someday, Lex will be free, of his father if not all the weight of the things he is supposed to do. For now, he will take his small victories.

~x~

“Burning leaves is illegal,” Clark Kent says, as they pass the fourth house with a smoke pillar rising from the backyard.

Lex grunts. Legal and illegal are meaningless. What really matters is whether the cops want to see you in prison or not.

“On our farm, we let them compost,” Clark Kent says.

Lex grunts.

“It’s really good for the soil. I mean, so’s burning, but not burning a whole bunch in a big pile. Like, controlled burns. That’s a good way to get really dark soil, like…” Clark trails off, looks at Lex nervously. “You know. Farm stuff.”

Lex tilts his head at Clark. “Tell me more,” he says, and Clark’s off again, talking about permaculture and lightning and the old prairies and… bees, somehow it always goes back to bees with Clark, and Lex is allowed to listen without fearing he’ll be quizzed after Clark finishes. It’s. Nice. When Lex started hanging around the local high school, wondering what he’d been missing (‘nothing good’ seems to be the answer), he didn’t expect to get Clark out of the deal. Someone who is… close… to Lex, in intellectual capacity and flexibility if not exactly in raw knowledge.

Someone who listens.

Someone who asks if he’s okay.

Someone to walk down the street talking about _dirt making techniques_ with.

Lex looks at Clark, the way the light reflects off his glasses and the freckles that dot his tawny skin and the awkward limbs he hasn’t quite grown into. He wonders what it might be like, if he were an ordinary boy and Clark was still Clark and they went to school together. Wonders.

Dismisses.

There is no room for this amidst his futures.

~x~

“Come out of your lab,” his father calls. Just loud enough to be heard through the door. He doesn’t need to shout to make Lex snap to attention. He saves shouting for when Lex is standing in front of him, can get the full effect of his reddening face and his swelling posture and the hundred thousand micro-moments of ‘this, this is when he starts hitting me.’

Lex expects being hit. But expectation is not a stand-in for knowledge, and knowing that blows will come in the future is not a substitute for knowing exactly when they will start to fall. Lex lives in the shadow of fists that have not yet struck.

Lex comes out of his lab.

“Come watch a movie with me,” his father says.

Lex follows his father to the living room.

Sits beside his father’s favorite spot on the couch, as far enough away as he can get without being accused of trying to get away from the man.

Watches as his father selects a movie from his collection of DVDs.

Sits silent as the advertisements roll by.

Learns the name of the movie from the title screen, in the instant before his father hits play.

Watches the movie silent, still, taking shallow breaths. It is a terribly inane movie, and Lex tries not to flinch at the occasional jabs at gay people, at women, the jokes about sex and coercion. He doesn’t say a word. Holds himself as a statue. Runs through his calculations, teases at the problems presented by the crown jewel of his meteorite collection, a brilliant green crystal that puts off radiation that he could, theoretically, tweak and pull and prod into powering an entire city. He’s already figured out how to direct beams of its radiation. If he could figure out how to synthesize it… 

Lex is still. Lex is silent.

The movie ends. His father takes out the DVD, puts it carefully back in its case. Lex watches him do it. On the occasions when his father forgets to replace his DVDs, he blames Lex. Takes every imagined scratch out on him, in words or in flesh. Lex can’t do anything about it if his father watches movies without Lex knowing, but when they watch together, the DVD always goes back in its case. One way or another.

Lex’s father leaves the room.

It is safe for Lex to return to his lab.

He tries not to run and only partially succeeds.

~x~

Lex Luthor will be the only good thing to come of Smallville.

Lex and the meteorite.

Everything, everyone else is irrelevant. Meaningless. Redundant. A small, anachronistic town like any other. A thousand hicks like any others.

He thought Clark… but it doesn’t matter what he thought. Lex knows better now. Clark Kent is nothing. No one. Certainly not worth remembering. Certainly not worth inclusion in the story of Lex’s life.

~x~

The issue with Superman…

There are many issues with Superman. Lex could spend years enumerating. But the issue, the heart of the matter, the very core and soul and thrust of it, is that Superman is a _threat_.

Not to the world at large. No, Superman is quite clearly not interested in wiping humanity off the map. If he was, they’d be gone, every last one of them. Lex would be incalculably frustrated with the fact that not everyone recognizes that if he weren’t able to make it work in his favor.

No. Superman is a threat to Lex.

Lex is supposed to be the future.

Lex is supposed to save the world.

Lex is supposed to be Metropolis’s hero.

For God’s sake, why did Superman have to come _here_? Lex could tolerate him. For a time. If he were in another city. There are thousands of cities. But no, Superman had to come here, and for his opening act he had to stop Lex from sabotaging a shuttle that was practically guaranteed to fall apart within a few years. And then! And then he had the nerve to confront Lex, to accuse him to his _face_ of trying to kill people, when Lex was trying to _save_ lives, dollars, and fragile faith in the space program.

The shuttle did not make it to orbit, as he planned. Fear of further sabotage made several teams go over the shuttle with a fine-toothed comb and discover the flaws that Lex had spotted instantly, as he planned. Why else would he let anyone discover that there had been sabotage? If he had wanted to destroy the shuttle, he would have destroyed it. Lex may have succeeded with his ultimate goal, but now, in the eyes of the world, this is Superman’s success.

Lex hadn’t even wanted credit. He was content to do his work from behind the scenes. But now Superman is here, threatening everything. Threatening Lex.

Lex is going to destroy Superman.


End file.
